


Blacking Out The Friction

by cascades (heartroots)



Category: Star Trek RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-06-07
Updated: 2009-06-07
Packaged: 2017-11-07 13:18:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,467
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/431606
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/heartroots/pseuds/cascades
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Chris likes to touch, and Zach goes through several phases regarding this, including discomfort, apathy, suspicion, acceptance, and obsession to the point of insanity. It's like the stages of depression, except with more erections and about the same amount of drinking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blacking Out The Friction

**Author's Note:**

> This is the first fic I've written in about, oh, I don't know, a _year._ Yeah. Big thank yous to Zach and Chris for incessantly invading my brain until I was forced to write everything I thought about them down.

Zach has noticed that Chris likes to touch. Fist-bumps, high-fives, bro-hugs, a hand on the shoulder, on the back, on the waist; Zach has been touched more on a daily basis, off-screen, since the filming for Star Trek started than he ever has been before. 

He shied away from the touches on instinct at first; smiled at Chris’s confused puppy-dog look and laughed it off, hoping Chris would pick up on the fact that it made him uncomfortable. He never got the hint, though. Or if he did, he ignored it.

Chris touches everyone else, too. He’s a touchy-feely kind of guy, and everyone on the cast and crew just sort of learns to accept it. But there’s something about the whole matter that bothers Zach. A lot. Everyone else ignores it or accepts it and reciprocates, but Anton shies away like Zach does. 

One day early on when they’re filming a scene Anton and Chris are in together, Zach comes in just as they’re walking off-set, and what he sees screws his logical conclusion about Chris all to hell: Chris moves to give Anton a friendly pat on the back, but then his face changes and he pulls his hand back, deciding on a friendly smile instead. And that’s as far as he goes. 

Zach quirks an eyebrow, an impressive expression for him. Zach figured that Chris was just oblivious, but maybe he’s not. Maybe he’s up to something. 

Chris stretches, cracks his knuckles, and turns around. His bright blue eyes land on Zach and a big grin breaks out across his face, and for a minute Zach forgets to be suspicious. Chris walks over and, even though Zach tries his darndest to avoid it, Chris gives Zach the pat on the back that was intended for Anton. Chris’s palm is warm, even through his shirt, his fingers spread and solid against the small of Zach’s back, and by the time Zach realizes he’s leaning into it, it’s gone and Chris is walking away with an even bigger grin than before. 

Oh yeah, he’s definitely up to something. The fucker. 

So, maybe after a while he doesn’t mind it when Chris touches him. It’s just that he’s used to it. He doesn’t like it or anything, he’s just… enduring. Yeah. You can’t practically live with someone for three months without getting acclimated to their habits and quirks. 

Like: Chris touches a lot, obviously, and he likes his coffee nearly black and he’s annoyingly responsible when it comes to staying up too late playing video games, and his handwriting is completely illegible; Zach knows the latter because Chris likes to write little notes in the margins of his script, and Zach likes to read them because, well, they’re kind of funny. He’s always scribbling something in it when he’s sitting in his chair watching a scene he’s not in, or waiting for his cue. 

Zach comes off the set one day, plops down in his chair next to Chris and glances something that looks like… huh. 

“Is that _me?_ ” Zach asks, grabbing Chris’s script before he can roll it up. 

“What? Oh, yeah,” Chris says, a little sheepishly. 

It’s a little cartoon drawing of him, with big pointy ears and even bigger eyebrows that are totally out of proportion because his eyebrows are not that big, thank you very much. Actually, it’s pretty good. 

“You draw?” Zach asks. 

“Not really draw, per se. Just, you know, doodle.”

“Well, it’s good,” Zach says with a smile, handing Chris back his slightly-crumpled script. 

“Thanks,” Chris says, smiling back, “I couldn’t resist your pointy ears.”

“No one can,” Zach says, and his voice gets a little deeper totally of its _own_ volition, Zach is sure of it. 

Suddenly, Chris is smiling a _different_ smile, and Zach feels a shiver go down his spine. He thinks that maybe Chris’s fans are right about him being attractive to an illegal extent, and then he wonders where that thought came from, and then he imagines Chris in handcuffs and really, really wishes he’d never stepped onto this train of thought. 

“I’m—I’m gonna go get the pointy ears taken off now,” Zach says in what he hopes is a steady tone. He has to resist the urge to close his eyes as he’s waiting for Chris to respond, because otherwise he’s stuck looking at him sprawled in his chair with his legs splayed and his jeans bunching at the crotch like he’s—no. He’s definitely not going there. Figuratively or literally. 

“You want to get a drink after this?” Chris asks, and Zach curses himself when he realizes he has to look up to meet Chris’s eyes and Chris is definitely going to know Zach was looking at his crotch, _shit._

“I— uh. I can’t. Other things to do, very important things. Maybe in the future. Some time,” Zach says hurriedly. 

“Oh, well— Oh, okay. See you later,” Chris says with that hurt puppy-dog look of confusion. Zach hates how much that look is starting to get to him; it makes him feel so _guilty_. If Chris keeps it up, Zach will never be able to say no to him again. It’s hard enough as it is, and he means that in more ways than one. 

With that revelation, Zach runs away. He might have jerked off in the shower later and Chris might have popped into his head for a second or two, but it was just a coincidence. Completely and totally coincidental. Yeah. 

Alright, so maybe he only shied away from Chris’s touches because he was afraid he might like them too much. He kept his resolve for a remarkable amount of time, especially when you take Chris’s physical appearance into consideration: his clear blue eyes, his mouth, his perfect hands, the exquisite way his clothes fit his body, and everything else. He’s a Hollywood pretty boy, yeah, but he’s _more_ than that. He reads Vonnegut and he has Mozart’s sonatas on his iPod between Linkin Park and Muse, and he likes Star Wars. He doesn’t even mind it when Zach recites every line along with Vader and Luke in Episode V, Zach’s favorite. In fact, the first time Zach did it Chris demanded more of Zach’s flawless impressions, and when Zach did The Shat Chris laughed so hard he almost fell off the couch. He might’ve been a little inebriated at that point, but Zach was still pleased. 

The point is— well, Zach doesn’t really know what the point is. These thoughts of Chris are all jumbled in his head and he doesn’t have the courage to untangle them and rearrange them into something that makes sense because he’s afraid of what he might find. Not that they mean anything. They don’t, of course they don’t, you just… never know. 

Eventually, Zach stops flinching away from Chris’s touch. Chris puts an arm around him and Zach leans against his shoulder; Chris puts a hand on Zach’s waist and Zach allows himself to be pulled a little closer: they stand with their shoulders together and don’t pull away when their hands brush and sit with their thighs touching, exchanging body heat like it’s going out of style. Every touch makes Zach’s heart race, and soon it’s an addiction. His morning routine is backed by a constant mental stream of _What Can I Do Today To Make Chris Touch Me?_ It’s the first time he’s ever gotten a hard-on brushing his teeth, that’s for sure. 

He never touches Chris first, though. It would be so easy for him to slip up, to some variation of: “Oh, was that your cock I just grabbed? Sorry, man. _Totally_ didn’t mean to. Really,” and Zach is entirely sure that that would not go over well. Because there is no way Chris is gay, no way. Not even a little bit. Beautiful women flock to him and Zach has never seen him turn a single one down. 

But then, Zach still has his doubts. Sometimes their eyes meet across a crowded room in a way that is eerily reminiscent of that one scene in Return of the King between Frodo and Sam towards the end, the one with all the slow motion and soft lighting. The first of the many Scenes That Could Have Been The End But Weren’t. 

And there’s the way Chris smiles at him, warm and sweet and genuine and _Chris._ Zach might be deluding himself, but he’s pretty sure Chris doesn’t smile like that at anyone else. 

And then there was the thing that happened on Chris’s couch once when they were sitting together watching Planet Earth. Zach shifted the position of his legs because they were starting to cramp, and he inadvertently brushed against Chris’s thigh. And Chris’s breath hitched, his breath _hitched._ Zach heard it. He didn’t say anything, but his heart skipped a beat and he had to concentrate _really hard_ on the disgusting cave creatures to distract himself from very inappropriate thoughts of inviting Chris to a party in his pants. Luckily, the glow worm is the least sexy thing on Earth. It solved Zach’s problem like a champ. Actually, it kind of made him want to vomit, and then pour bleach on his brain. Oh, and it also gave him one question to ask the Universe if he ever ran into it at a party or something: the glow worm: _why in the fuck?_

So yeah, sometimes he doubts that Chris is completely straight. But the evidence to the contrary is overwhelming, so Chris is completely straight. As Gil Grissom would say, the evidence doesn’t lie, and there’s no point in hoping when motherfucking Gil Grissom is on the opposing side. Chris is, and will always remain, his grabby, annoyingly sexy just-friend. 

And then one day, Chris stops touching him. No more bro-hugs or arms around his shoulders or hands resting on the small of his back, and Zach misses it like hell. He yearns for it, for just a brief brush of their fingers when they’re reaching for their coffee or their scripts, or the steady warmth of Chris’s thigh against his when they’re sitting together on the couch playing Tony Hawk. 

But there’s nothing. Nothing. 

After a week Zach gets desperate, so he breaks his only rule and decides to try to initiate the touches. One early, early, _early_ morning before filming, he smiles at a sleepy, rumpled Chris and puts a hand on the small of his back when he hands him his coffee, hoping for a sleepy, rumpled hug in return. Chris smiles back, for just a split second, and then his face goes blank and he mumbles something about needing to piss and runs off. Zach then realizes what the confused, hurt puppy-dog look feels like firsthand. It is his one and only attempt at touching Chris first, and he vows to never try it again. 

It’s so _frustrating._ Zach can’t figure out what he did. It’s obviously his fault, with the way Chris is running away from him. But what did he do? 

Maybe Chris is just stressed. Filming’s almost over and everyone gets a little cranky under the pressure of wrapping up. Anton _yelled_ the other day. It was hilarious, but they all made sure to laugh discreetly behind their scripts and coffee cups and whatnot because they didn’t want to discourage him. He was trying so hard to be frightening. Actually, it reminded Zach of that part in the Lion King where baby Simba tries to roar and gets denied. Cute. 

They go through the motions and before they know it, they’re done. Star Trek is scheduled for its theatrical release and they can all breathe easier. Well, everyone except Zach because he still can’t figure out why Chris isn’t touching him. It’s been weeks, and it’s getting to be one of the only things Zach thinks about. They still talk and hang out once in a while, but they never touch. Ever. If they do touch accidentally, Chris pulls back like he’s been burned. It’s a little insulting, as a matter of fact. And it’s starting to piss Zach off. 

The night after the wrap party, Zoe tells Zach they’re all going out for drinks. Zach decides this is a good idea because all of them includes Chris, and Zach thinks that maybe if Chris gets a little intoxicated, Zach might be able to get the truth out of him. He’s a loose drunk. 

They go to some new hip bar that’s just opened, one of those bars with names that are just completely irrelevant nouns, like Box or Mirror or Floor; Zach could come up with a million of them just listing the things in his trailer. It’s crowded, and the bass is so loud the floor trembles under Zach’s feet as he walks. Blue and purple lights fan out and blend across the dance floor, punctuated by the seizure-inducing flashes of white strobe lights. It’s packed with young, beautiful, soulless Hollywood youths, and Zach can’t help but notice how well Chris fits into the crowd. It’s disconcerting. 

Anton and John head over to the first group of pretty girls they see and start chatting them up with their new favorite pick-up line: “Hey, you a Trekkie?” It hasn’t worked yet. Chris heads to the dance floor with Zoe, and Karl just disappears, as he is wont to do. Zach sighs and sits down at the bar.

The bartender recognizes him and Zach has to smile politely while the man gushes. He then insists on making him their commemorative new Star Trek drink, on the house, and, gosh, how could Zach say no to a fan? The bartender clunks a shot glass on the table and mixes the drink in a flurry of complicated maneuvers that Zach will have memorized by the end of the night. It’s purple with clouds of blue and it’s _glowing_ ; Zach is pretty sure it’s going to leave him incapacitated and possibly radioactive in the morning, but he knocks it back anyway. It is for a fan, after all. And oh, how can he resist a second one? And then another, and another, and two more when he sees some random girl grinding against Chris on the dance floor, and then another, and another. 

At some point, the bartender starts to look a combination of sad and worried for him, but he doesn’t cut him off. Zach just keeps pounding them down, slow and steady. 

Karl drags Anton and John out at around one in the morning, and the two are laughing and flushed and leaning heavily on each other while Karl tries to look stern. Apparently they struck out. Or they’re going to have a freaky threesome with Karl. Zach wonders why they didn’t invite him to join in. No one ever invites him to anything fun. 

“Zach?”

It’s Zoe. Zach swallows another shot before he looks up at her. She’s so beautiful. Why doesn’t he like _her?_

“I’m leaving. Do you want to come with, or are you waiting for Chris?” It’s apparent in her tone that the former option is just being offered as a courtesy, because _of course_ Zach is waiting for Chris. He’s always waiting for Chris. He’s incapable of doing anything else. 

“I’m waiting for Chris,” Zach says evenly, trying not to sound bitter and failing because he’s so fucking drunk. Zoe puts a friendly hand on his shoulder and Zach is grateful for the touch, even if it’s not Chris. “Bye Zoe. Have a good night.”

“Don’t get too drunk, okay?” she says, and she sounds a little worried too, but before Zach can reassure her, she’s gone. 

Zach knocks back another shot. 

The bartender eventually does cut him off, but he looks really sad about it. Zach feels kind of bad about that, so he tells him, slurring every word masterfully, that it’s okay, he’s just doing his job, no need to be trippin’. Zach then assures him that he’d never use the word “trippin’” sober, and that he’s actually very equolent when he’s not drunk. Equelont. _Eloquent._ Yeah, that’s the one. The bartender nods along accommodatingly, and Zach stops talking because he suddenly has to concentrate very, _very_ hard to not fall off his barstool. It’s a challenge. 

Zach has no idea what time it is when Chris shows up. He probably couldn’t have read a clock even if he’d tried. 

“Hey,” Chris says. Zach wobbles and almost falls when he looks up at him, so he grabs the table to keep himself steady. Chris frowns. Now he looks a little worried, too, but this time it makes Zach feel bad. “You ready to go?”

Zach’s brain says, ‘yes’, but his mouth says, “Are _you_ ready to go?”

“Uh, yes? Come on,” Chris says, motioning towards the door. 

“Because I don’t think you’ve fucked enough desperate, fawning girls yet,” says Zach’s mouth in a quiet, even, serious tone, and Zach’s brain says, ‘Nonono, what the fuck are you doing? Shut up, _shut up._ ’

Chris says, “ _What?_ ” and Zach can tell he’s hoping he heard him wrong over the pounding music, because that’s perfectly plausible. This is Zach’s chance to stop this before it starts. Okay, go:

Zach’s brain says, ‘Nothing, let’s go.’ Good start. But then his stupid fucking asshole mouth says, “You know what? Fuck you. Why don’t you go back to your hordes of pathetic, drooling concubines and leave me alone?” 

Chris heard him this time. His eyes flash and his jaw clenches, and Zach’s drunk brain realizes two things: this is what Chris looks like _right_ before he punches you in the face, and it is seriously turning Zach on. It doesn’t last, though. Chris gives him this horrible, horrible hurt look and says, “Find your own way back home,” and then he’s gone. 

Somehow that’s even worse than getting punched in the face. A lot worse. 

Zach’s brain and mouth, having finally gotten their shit together, both say, “ _Fuck._ ” 

\---

Zach wakes up when his alarm goes off at Way Too Fucking Early in the morning. Having forgotten his escapades from the night before, he unwittingly opens his eyes and sunlight explodes before them in a white hot flash of pain. That’s as good a reminder as any, he supposes. He groans and shuts his eyes. Those shots really were a bad idea. They probably caused brain damage and they didn’t even erase what he wanted them to erase. He’d been really, really hoping he wouldn’t remember. 

But he does. Clearly, and painfully so. That _look_ on Chris’s face. Fuck. Drunk Zach is a dick. As he stumbles to the shower and his head throbs like his brain is trying to make a break for it, Zach decides never to get drunk again. Not even on New Year’s, or Arbor Day. Never again. 

Later, he wishes he could have taken a picture of the look on his face when he came out of the shower, grabbed his phone out of his jeans pocket, and found out that he had an interview with Chris to do that day. And the car would be there in five minutes. 

_Fuck._

“Never, ever drinking again,” he grumbles to himself as he pulls on his jeans and a sweater that he really hopes is clean. He doesn’t even bother with his hair, or shaving. He grabs a cup up coffee, empties about twenty sugar packets into it, and gulps it down on his way outside, swallowing past his burning throat. 

When he opens the door of the car and Chris is already there with that _look_ on his face, Zach seriously reconsiders his decision never to drink again. 

\---

The atmosphere in the car is so tense Zach could scream. He finished his coffee a good fifteen minutes ago and now he’s just fidgeting: flexing his knuckles, tapping his fingertips against his knee, adjusting and readjusting and re-readjusting the tongues on his Converse, trying to fix his damp, floppy hair. 

Chris just stares out the window, his profile softly outlined in the morning sunlight. 

“I’m fucking sorry,” Zach finally blurts out when he can’t take the silence anymore. 

Chris ignores him. 

“Chris. Chris. _Chris._ Christopher.”

“What?” Chris snaps, and man, Zach _really_ hates that face. 

“I just said I’m sorry.”

“I heard you.”

“Okay. So you don’t forgive me.”

“No.”

Zach frowns and re-re-readjusts the tongues on his Converse. “I’m really, really sorry, though. I’m an asshole. You should have punched me in the face, possibly more than once. I was completely out of line. I don’t even know where that came from. I guess… I was jealous.” That’s true, in a roundabout sort of way. “I’m really, really sorry. Come on. Please throw me a line here Chris, _please._ ”

Chris sighs. It’s a while before he speaks, and when he does it’s slow and drawn-out and punctuated with disappointed looks. 

“Honestly Zach, I expected you to be different. I thought you were, for a while. You know me better than that, or at least I thought you did. I’m not some— some soulless womanizing dick. Everyone assumes that, just from looking at me. They see me talk to one woman, just one, and it’s forever cemented in their minds that that’s what I am. People see what they want to see, I guess. It just never seems to occur to them that maybe I don’t want girls constantly draping themselves all over me. I don’t mind a few— ” Zach snorts, and Chris smiles just a little, on reflex, and then he’s back to frowning again, “But people reduce me to that, all the time, and frankly, it’s insulting. Really insulting. It makes me sound like some kind of misogynistic asshole. And I thought you were different.”

“I, I didn’t mean to— ”

“Then why’d you say it?”

“Chris, I was drunk. Really drunk. Really, really drunk. I couldn’t even say ‘eloquent’, I remember. Oh, and I said ‘trippin’’. I really did, you can ask the bartender. I was out of it. It wasn’t pretty.”

“Doesn’t mean it wasn’t the truth.”

“Chris— ”

The car stops and Chris says, “Later.” 

Great, Zach thinks as they get out of the car. Time for the most awkward, strained interview on the planet. At least some of the other cast members will be there to lessen the tension. 

He’ll talk to Chris later, then. He has to fix this. 

There is a moment during the interview from hell where Chris touches Karl on the shoulder, and Zach gets the same tight feeling in his chest that he did when he was in the bar watching Chris with those girls, and all of a sudden he _knows._ It shouldn’t be as surprising as it is, but Zach can be really oblivious when he wants to be. He does play make-believe for a living, after all. He has to look down during the rest of the interview because he can’t look at Chris without getting that feeling in his chest, plus another one in his stomach that he’s had for months and is just now identifying as butterflies. Fuck. 

He really has to fix this. Later. 

Later comes a whole two weeks later when there’s finally a break in the event scheduling and they can all take it easy and catch their collective breath. Zach runs into Chris, apparently on the way back from getting coffee which is a little weird because it’s seven o’clock, in the hallway in front of his hotel room. They’re staying in the same hotel, in the same hallway, four downs apart. Normally that would mean living in each other’s rooms, but things aren’t quite normal right now. 

Chris is already moving to slide his keycard into the door, so Zach decides to start his apology by getting Chris to invite him in. 

“Hey,” Zach says.

“Hi,” Chris says stiffly. He slips and the keycard hits the side of the slot, but the second time it works and he opens the door. When he walks through he leaves it open, so Zach assumes he’s allowed to come in. He shuts the door behind him and stands in the room that is eerily identical to his own, debating on whether he should say something or wait for Chris to say something first and set the tone. 

But Chris doesn’t say anything. He just stands in the kitchenette, adding sugar painfully slowly to his coffee; it looks to Zach like he’s putting it in one grain at a time. Knowing Chris, Zach wouldn’t doubt it.

“It wasn’t you,” Zach says all of a sudden, surprising himself. 

“What?” Chris asks distractedly. He doesn’t look up from executing his tedious grain-by-grain sugar migration; apparently it takes a lot of concentration. 

“I wasn’t upset because you were all over those girls,” Zach starts, walking over to Chris at a steady pace that matches his tone, “Well. I was, but not in the way you thought I was. I wasn’t upset because I thought you were a manwhore or a misogynistic asshole or anything like that. I could never think that about you, Chris. Never. I wasn’t—I wasn’t jealous of you. I was,” Zach pauses, takes a deep breath and says, in a bit of a rush, “I was jealous of them. Because they got you and I didn’t.” 

“ _What?_ ” 

Chris gives him his full attention this time, sugar spilling from the sugar bowl onto the countertop as he snaps around to look at Zach. His mouth is open and if Zach was a lesser man, he’d be fetishizing it like mad right now. As it is, he’s only doing it a little bit. It’s noble of him. Zach is also staring at Chris’s eyelashes, but mainly because Chris is blinking over and over and over at the speed of light, as if he thinks maybe if he blinks enough times at a rapid enough pace, reality will come back. 

Zach soldiers on: “I think I’m… kindofalittlebitinlovewithyou. Sorry.” 

Zach cringes, waits for the inevitable letdown. Judging from the look on Chris’s face, this is totally throwing him, and why wouldn’t it be? Zach was right all along. Chris is completely straight. Fuck, fuck, _fuck._

“ _Sorry?_ ” Chris mouths Zach’s last word slowly, as if it’s in another language. 

Then he laughs, madly, grabs the front of Zach’s shirt and crushes their lips together. 

Zach’s brain halts, completely. It’s like it hit a blue screen and now it’s got to process everything before it can start up again. His eyes are wide with shock and Chris hasn’t shut his yet, so they’re staring into each other’s eyes with their lips touching and their noses brushing and Chris’s fist clenched in the front of Zach’s t-shirt, fingers flexing every so often, knuckles pressing lightly into Zach’s chest. Zach doesn’t know if it’s safe for him to move; Chris is like a wild animal when his emotions are running high, and right now, Zach is pretty off his game. He’s so far off his game he can’t even see his game. 

“I’m… confused. To say the least,” he finally says against Chris’s lips, slowly, so as not to break the moment. Chris pulls back a little, but they’re still close enough that they’re breathing each other’s air, close enough that Zach can pick out every different-colored fleck of blue in Chris’s eyes. 

“I like you, you ignoramus,” Chris says, biting his lip and giving Zach a look that makes his heart flutter. He explicates this point further with a hard roll his hips. 

Zach’s brain short circuits a little, and he sucks in a sharp breath and then lets it out by saying, “Good—good word.” He almost rocks his hips back in response, but then he remembers he was trying to make a point. Or something. “Wait, no—Chris. Chris. Just, wait a second. I thought—you stopped, you stopped touching me and we weren’t as close anymore, we hardly even talked, and I assumed that. Well.”

“I didn’t like you anymore?”

Zach nods, as much as he can without knocking into Chris’s forehead. 

Chris shakes his head. “I couldn’t just stop liking you. After what, almost a year of being friends? That’s stupid. You’re stupid. Good thing I like you so much.”

“I can see that,” Zach says dryly. Chris laughs again, deep and wild and intoxicating, and Zach can’t stand it anymore. Fuck understanding, fuck making sense, fuck logic; he’s not really Spock. He grabs Chris by the shoulders, turns him around, pins him up against the opposite edge of the counter and kisses him, for real this time. Chris lets out a little, “oh,” of surprise, but he obviously has a better recovery time for crazy shit than Zach does because almost immediately he’s kissing back, pulling Zach closer with the grip he still has on his shirt and reciprocating with abandon. Zach pushes a knee between his thighs, wraps a hand around the back of his neck to pull him even closer. It’s more touching than they’ve done in months, more than they’ve _ever_ done, and it has Zach hard in a split-second. 

The kiss is frantic, exploratory and messy and hot in this perfectly imperfect way that embodies Chris, completely. That’s how everything is with him. The scars on his face and back, the uneven birthmark on his side, his horrible singing voice: they should detract from him, make him less perfect, but to Zach they just make him better. Perfection isn’t real, but Chris is. He’s tangible perfection, as Zach is currently discovering. Zach takes in everything: his lips, which feel even better than they look if that’s even physically _possible_ ; his eyelashes, fluttering with every little tactile sensation; his hands, shaking with adrenaline and gripping too hard at Zach’s shoulders, then resting on his hips, clutching at his waist, combing through his hair, and then back to his shoulders, fingernails digging into the fabric. 

Zach rubs his thigh against the growing bulge in Chris’s pants, just as an experiment, and Chris’s breath hitches, just like the Planet Earth incident. Now Zach is sure Chris was hard for him even back then, and Zach can’t hold back his moan at _that._ Chris smiles at him, that different smile Zach is beginning to get to know so well, and he just has to know. 

“How long have you wanted this?” Zach asks. Even Chris’s bedroom eyes can’t distract him from his curiosity. Not that he’ll be able to hold out for long, though. They’re _distracting._ They are possibly the most distracting thing on Earth. Although, there will never be a conclusive study on this theory because Zach is never letting anyone else see them again. Ever. 

“You mentioned before how I stopped touching you? That’s how long,” Chris says, biting his lip again. He should not look that cute when he’s rubbing off against Zach’s thigh. That just shouldn’t be possible. 

“Shit Chris, really? Why didn’t you just say something?” Zach asks, starting on the buttons on Chris’s shirt. 

“Because I wasn’t sure. Not really. Why, how long for you?” 

Zach snorts. “Since you _started_ touching me. Which would be when we met.” 

Zach has to pull back to finish unbuttoning the buttons, and then Chris arches away from the counter and into Zach, groaning and then licking his lips as he shrugs the shirt off his shoulders. Zach is completely sure it’s the sexiest way he’s ever seen someone shrug a shirt off, ever. Period. 

“Why didn’t _you_ say something? Take your shirt off.” 

Zach does as he’s told, and then answers: “Because I was entirely certain you were straight. You never gave me anything to the contrary work with. What was I supposed to think?” 

“Do I really come off as that straight?” Chris asks with a frown.

“Yes,” Zach says, and then he moves his hand from Chris’s hip to his happy trail and runs his thumb, slowly, along the line where the waistband of his jeans meets his skin; Chris’s grip on Zach’s shoulders tightens, ever so slightly. 

“I’m sorry,” Chris says sincerely. And then, with this mischievous, fucking dirty smile, “If you take my pants off, I’ll make it up to you.” 

If Zach wasn’t already hard, that would’ve done it. It is so not fair for one person to have a monopoly on all the sexiness in the whole entire world. Not fair at all. 

“If you say so,” he says roughly, possibly a little desperately. His hands scramble to unbutton and unzip Chris’s jeans, and as he’s fumbling with the stupid catch he wonders why the fuck Chris isn’t wearing sweatpants. Things would be so much easier if Chris was wearing sweatpants, he should wear sweatpants for the rest of eternity because Zach never wants to stop doing this and he wants the convenience, damn it. He eventually prevails over the fastenings and Chris helps him push the jeans over his hips; their hands touch and stay touching for the first time in a long time. 

Their eyes meet, and they both smile, nervous and eager as all hell. 

Chris licks his lips again and Zach has to kiss him. He tilts his head and pushes his tongue into Chris’s mouth as Chris kicks his fallen jeans aside and Zach starts rubbing him through his briefs, marveling at Chris’s surprised gasps and heartfelt, stuttering moans. With the sounds he’s making and those fucking _lips,_ Zach is sure Chris could’ve made it big in the porn industry, probably just by Zach’s contributions alone. 

The fabric of Chris’s briefs are getting wet where Zach is circling the head of his cock, and that’s all the invitation Zach needs. With a guttural sound not unlike a growl, he pushes Chris’s briefs down his thighs and wraps his fingers around him, stroking experimentally. The raw sound Chris makes is _unbelievable,_ and then his hands are fumbling blindly for the catch on Zach’s jeans while his hips buck in a way that’s entirely counterproductive to the first task he’s trying to complete. Zach doesn’t mind, though. Not at all. In fact, anyone who _would_ mind Chris Pine eagerly groping for their zipper while thrusting his hips and rubbing his hard, naked cock against their jeans for the barest hint of friction, desperate with need, belongs in a straitjacket. 

Chris eventually gets Zach’s jeans off with a lot of help from Zach, whose hands are steadier comparatively. Then Chris shoves Zach’s boxers over his hips and spins him around so Zach is the one pressed against the counter. Chris ruts against him, his hands tugging at his hair as the edge of the countertop digs into his bare back in a way that would painful in any other situation. Now it’s just another turn-on. 

Like: Chris licking his lips, biting them, parting them as he pants out heavy, labored breaths that are often interrupted by moans of _fuck_ and _Jesus Christ, harder_ and sometimes a frantic _Zach, Zach, Zach._ Chris’s hands are everywhere, as is his mouth; the only steady sensation is that of Chris’s cock slip-sliding against his. 

Zach opens his eyes, unaware that he’d closed them in the first place, and his heart skips a beat when the first thing he sees is Chris’s shocking blue eyes, pupils blown wide with lust, staring straight at him.

“ _Chris_ ,” he groans. He takes his and Chris’s cocks into his hand and starts jerking them off together. Zach stifles Chris’s cry with a hard, messy kiss that reignites with every shock of pleasure that shoots down Zach’s spine. Chris’s hands find Zach’s hair again, and he tugs it in sync with every thrust and graceful arch of his spine. 

Zach’s eyes aren’t even open and he know Chris is beautiful, knows it like he knows the sky is blue and George Takei is gay. Eventually they’re doing less kissing and more breathing into each other’s mouths, until Chris throws his head back, cries out and comes over Zach’s hand. 

Zach opens his eyes. Chris staring back at him, messy and flushed and debauched and _perfect,_ is enough to send him over the edge as well. He breathes Chris’s name and Chris shivers against him. 

They stay that way for a while, catching their breath and staring intently at each other. It’s like they’re afraid they’ll wake up if one of them moves. Zach’s hand is resting on the small of Chris’s back and Chris is rubbing slow, soft circles on Zach’s hip with his thumb. When their heart rate is close to being back to normal and neither of them has woken up to find themselves the victim of a particularly vivid wet dream, Zach thinks it’s safe to say: “So you’re not straight, then?” 

Chris snorts and shoves him. Zach shoves back a little too hard and they end up on the floor, wrestling and laughing and kissing until they’re dizzy. 

Chris does end up in sweatpants later on, to Zach’s delight. And so does he, a pair of Chris’s that are too big but somehow more comfortable than every item of clothing he’s ever owned in his entire life. When Chris’s caffeine high wears off, they lie on the couch together watching Planet Earth, the one with the penguins, and it’s like everything’s come full-circle in the most amazing way possible. Zach loves his life. 

Chris falls asleep with his head on Zach’s chest and Zach just can’t stop smiling. 

\---

They’re in an interview a week later, and everything is back to normal except for how now they’re fucking, and something wonderful happens when they’re talking about, strangely enough, William Shatner:

“I mean, I’m, I’m not surprised at how many people we've been talking to on this trip that have noticed it, but I think it's because it's juxtaposed with his, his, his real self and his own performance, and that's, it's a testament to your—your talent,” Zach finishes, hoping the interviewer doesn’t read too much into his rambling about how wonderful Chris is. He’s been doing that a lot lately. Or maybe he was doing it all along and he just never noticed it. 

He looks over at Chris, waiting patiently for his reaction, and Chris looks back. Their eyes lock for as long as they can without arousing suspicion, and then Chris puts an arm around his shoulders.

Zach realizes with a start that this is the first time Chris has touched him in public since he first stopped touching him months ago; Chris is touching him and he doesn’t care if millions, even billions of people see. Zach’s heart soars. 

His mouth says, “Thanks, man,” but his brain says, ‘I love you so fucking much.’


End file.
